How Smart Watches Work

So far, no smart watch has captured the imagination and devotion of consumers. With so many companies dumping so much time and money into these products, it seems likely that at some point, a smart watch will strike industry gold.

It may be that the rumored products from Apple and Google could be the ones to succeed. Apple is known for its ability to combine usefulness with aesthetics, and Google's deep pockets and sprawling Android user base could help put a smart watch over the top.

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Until the first home-run product arrives, it's anyone's guess as to where watches will go from here. Perhaps they'll always be considered smartphone accessories, permanently tethered to a more powerful handheld device. Or maybe an innovative user interface and better battery life will result in watches that cast off master gadgets as unnecessary, and perhaps ... unfashionable.

It might be that the limited real estate of a watch is simply too difficult of a hurdle for contemporary technologies to overcome. At the moment, each manufacturer is basically going fishing – throwing out their lines of products in the hopes that at least one of them will snag a following. So far, Pebble (perhaps the biggest underdog in the entire lineup) has done best, selling more than 250,000 units in its initial offering.

If such a small company can find a niche with its digital contraptions, you can bet that bigger corporations are working to do the same.